Town Hall Seattle and SAMA: Music+Art present
Global Rhythms: Trio Brasileiro
Spirited Strings
Steve Oney
On Air: The History of NPR
Note: Town Hall events are approximately 75 minutes long.
Founded in 1970, NPR is America’s most powerful broadcast news network. Despite being overshadowed by the larger and more glamorous PBS, public radio has long been home to shows such as All Things Considered, Morning Edition, and This American Life that captivate millions of listeners in homes, cars, and workplaces across the nation. In On Air, a book fourteen years in the making, journalist Steve Oney tells the history of this institution, tracing the comings and goings of legendary on-air talents (Bob Edwards, Susan Stamberg, Ira Glass, Cokie Roberts, and many others) and the rise and fall and occasional rise again of brilliant and sometimes venal executives.
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Oney depicts how NPR created a medium for extraordinary journalism—in which reporters and producers use microphones as paintbrushes and the voices of people around the world as the soundtrack of stories both global and local. Featuring details on the controversial firing of Juan Williams, the sloppy dismissal of Bob Edwards, and a $235 million bequest by Joan B. Kroc, widow of the founder of McDonald’s, On Air also chronicles NPR’s shift into the digital world and its early embrace of podcasting formats, establishing the network as a formidable media empire.
Steve Oney is a longtime journalist who worked for many years as a staff writer for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Magazine and Los Angeles magazine. He has also contributed articles to many national publications, including Esquire, The Wall Street Journal, New York magazine, GQ, and The New York Times Magazine. His history of the lynching of Leo Frank, And the Dead Shall Rise, won the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award and the National Jewish Book Award. Oney was educated at the University of Georgia and at Harvard, where he was a Nieman Fellow. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Madeline Stuart.
Presented by Town Hall Seattle.
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